Rep. Nancy Mace, Trump critic-turned-ally, to run for South Carolina governor

Washington Post

10 hours ago

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-South Carolina), who has shifted her stance on President Donald Trump and other topics over the years, announced Monday that she will run for governor in 2026, joining a crowded GOP field that includes a candidate she has sharply clashed with this year.
Mace, 47, released a one-minute launch video depicting her as a resilient firebrand who pushes back against her own party on some issues, but is staunchly conservative on others, such as transgender rights. The video also includes a reference to Trump praising her last year as 'a fighter.' She's expected to roll out a policy proposal at The Citadel, a South Carolina military school where in 1999 she became the first woman to graduate from the Corps of Cadets, a previously all-male undergraduate institution.
'President Trump needs MAGA governors who implement his agenda at the state level on down and the 2026 midterms, is where we can do it,' Mace said in an interview with The Washington Post. 'My campaign will be focused on restoring law and order, ending the state income tax, protecting women and kids, fixing our broken judicial system, solving the energy crisis and working to fix our infrastructure,' she added.
Mace enters what's shaping up to be a crowded primary to succeed term-limited Republican Gov. Henry McMaster. Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette; state Sen. Josh Kimbrell; state Attorney General Alan Wilson, the son of Rep. Joe Wilson (R-South Carolina); and Rep. Ralph Norman (R-South Carolina) are already running.
In February, Mace delivered a speech on the House floor alleging that her ex-fiancé had physically abused her, filmed her without her consent and conspired with others to sexually abuse women. She also accused Wilson of not moving quickly enough in processing evidence she turned over to the state. Wilson's office called Mace's comments 'categorically false' and said it 'had no role and no knowledge of these allegations until her public statements.' Mace's ex-fiancé denied the allegations against him.
It's unclear if Trump will endorse in the primary. The president's support is the most coveted prize in GOP primaries and he is especially influential in South Carolina, where he won by a wide margin in 2024.
Mace's changing dynamic with Trump has coincided with a shift in her district to the right. She went from working on his campaign in 2016 to publicly criticizing him in 2021 following the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob, to later embracing him.
On other fronts, from abortion to transgender rights and more, Mace has also changed. In some cases she has threatened to break with her party leadership before ultimately siding with them on major legislation.
On abortion, she lambasted her Republican colleagues for bringing a vote to the floor that would block travel reimbursement to members of the military seeking the procedure but then voted for it.
Last year, she introduced legislation to prohibit transgender women from using women's bathrooms just days after the first openly trans person was elected to Congress. She had previously said in 2023 she supported transgender rights but opposed gender-affirming surgery and hormone blockers for children. In 2021, Mace said that she 'strongly' supported 'LGBTQ rights and equality.'
When it comes to raising the country's borrowing authority, days after declared in a 2023 op-ed she would 'remain a NO regardless of the pressure put on me by those in power,' she supported a GOP legislative package to do that.
The primary could in some ways test, on a statewide scale, the GOP appetite for such shifts. Mace said she had not been inconsistent.
'My voting record is very, very consistent for those paying attention,' she said in the interview with The Post in response to criticism that she has tacked to the right. 'I've been very consistent on my voting record and that hasn't changed at all.'
In 2023, she angered many of her Republican colleagues in Congress when she voted with seven GOP hard-liners to oust California Republican Kevin McCarthy as House speaker.
Mace won her seat in Congress in 2020 after defeating incumbent Democrat Joe Cunningham. Within days of her swearing in, she broke with most of her party when she criticized the Jan. 6 attack. Mace blamed Trump for the attack, accusing him of inciting supporters who stormed the Capitol grounds.
A year after her comments, she posted a video outside of Trump Tower in New York lauding her work to help Trump's election bid in 2016. Trump endorsed GOP challenger Katie Arrington against Mace in 2022 and then later disparaged Mace as 'crazy' and 'a terrible person' at a rally in South Carolina. Mace won her primary and the general election.
Trump eventually backed Mace during her 2024 reelection, calling her a 'fighter' to a crowd in South Carolina. 'When she sets her sight on something, she's tough,' he said.
Mace's national profile could give her an early edge when candidates are looking to break out of a crowded race, some strategists said.
'Nancy Mace is very good at drawing attention to herself,' said Joel Sawyer, a political consultant in South Carolina. 'Mace's inconsistencies, however, aren't lost on people on the ground in her home state, he added.
'She's like Forrest Gump's box of chocolates,' Sawyer said. 'You never know what Nancy Mace you're going to get.'